The leeches come home
While ConDem smile their sweet smiles, a little look behind the reality may be of some help.
Peers
We will cut the number of MPs they loudly shout, while quietly shoe-horning in 200 peers.
Each of these scum rip the tax payer off everytime they remember to turn up for the roll-call and then wander off back home.
Why did the ConDemns decide they needed to appoint these Peers? Nothing to do with ensuring they get theri way. Labour was a centralist monopoly, this lot are just a simple dictatorship.
The New ConDem coalition already wasting money
Just hours in to a new regime, which loudly claimed to be a fighter of waste, we can already see this means nothing at all.
The Department for Children, Schools and Families has been renamed Department for Education. I have put in a freedom of information request to ascertain exactly how much this piece of ego-massage will cost the tax-payer. Not to mention a query on the Green principles as all of the redundant physical material will now have to be dumped.
What else has ConDem been up to?
We have the joys of a new National Security Council, a Quango by any other name.
National Security Council
And as a final twist in the pleasure to come an intention by these people to change the way a Motion of No Confidence can be passed.
The reason we have a coalition is that with 51% of the Members of Parliament a Motion of No Confidence could have been passed, hence the 326 MPs target.
With the new dictatorship the requirement is 55% of them must now be counted, which amounts to a Government only requiring 292 MPs vote against the Motion of No Confidence for the Government to stay in office.
The coalition was unnecessary.
ConDemned already
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=a31688a9-950d-4004-8ab4-04e9d0fd4682)
Legal insider trading
- Image via Wikipedia
Thanks to the Nationalist Socialist Party of the UK, aka The Labour party, shorthand- Nazi (UK) -Government, for declaring insider trading is now legal.
Hiding billions of pounds in security is now an completely acceptable way for a PLC to operate, in the old days, before the Nazis took power, this was unacceptable and any PLC had to legally declare this information, because funnily enough a PLC means everyone is entitled to equal information.
Sure, the rules were bent as far as possible and pension fund managers who hold shares for two days got more information than any individual investor ever got hold of, but at least even under the self serving Tories, billions of pounds of security, hit the wires.
Thanks to the minion who goes by the title ‘Chancellor of the Exchequer’ and his playmate Brown, who has the title of Prime Minister, those rules go by the board.
It is now absolutely acceptable for a PLC to fail to declare their true financial status and up to the shareholders to find out the truth about the company in which they are investing.
I have no vested gripe with capitalism, but I do have a real problem when it becomes acceptable to hide information which would enable private investors to make rational decisions.
There can now never be a genuine trial against insider trading in the UK. The Government have set a precedent. The Directors of the banks didn’t sell their shares because they knew full well the bank wasn’t going to fail, that information should have become immediately available to shareholders, who may well have taken different positions on the market at that time, not to mention subsequent trading decisions.
We need to look at the spike in share price and the spike in options trading shortly after the Nazi (UK) Government made their hidden securitisation and find out, which fund managers were privy to information, they are the evidence that insider trading is now formally legal in the UK.
The Nazis (UK) manage a better job of anarchy in the UK than anyone else.
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=60dd0279-5b2b-48c2-9232-7c9874f83e09)
How Independent is Ipsa?
The Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority has now been set up and a Chairman appointed, but just how independent is Ipsa?
Ipsa
Professor Sir Ian Kennedy, was appointed to the role as Chair of the Committee and has already announced that he doesn’t particularly like the idea of MPs not being able to employ family members, nor MPs not being able to make a profit on second homes paid for by taxpayers. Well as an independent individual, he is of course entitled to express a view, if only he were actually independent and Ipsa actually had any teeth.
Ian Kennedy
Kennedy, who is being paid £700 a day, capped at £100 000 for the first year only, is a great friend of politicians. By ‘98 he had managed to find a place on the committee investigating quarantine and pet passports, he subsequently chaired the inquiry into the deaths of children during heart surgery at Bristol Royal Infirmary. Subsequent appointments saw him become became chairman of the Health-care Commission and in October he was appointed chairman of a King’s Fund inquiry into GP standards. Seemingly a Labour Party coterie, as Alastair Campbell noted in his diary, of a stay in his house in Puyméras, “’…there were too many party people around in one go – Neil and Glenys at the bottom of the road, the Goulds in the village, Jonathan and family about a mile away, and the Kennedys…’. Kennedy was Campbells’ phone a friend on a television quiz programme.
The claim that Ipsa is an Independent body is something if a sick political joke, as not only did the actual appointment of Kennedy have to be approved by a panel chaired by Bercow, a man who readers of this blog will know I have scant regard, comprising: Leader of the Commons Harriet Harman, shadow leader of the Commons Sir George Young, Liberal Democrat Nick Harvey, Standards and Privileges Committee chairman David Curry, senior Labour MPs Sir Stuart Bell and Don Touhig and former Labour whip Liz Blackman but far more importantly the Quango has no teeth, but before I head down that line, let us look at the panel who is responsible for Ipsa appointments. The Panel who decided to put forward Kennedy’s name for Chair of Ipsa comprises:
Felicity Huston who chairs the appointments who has held appointments including: From May 2000 to September 2008 , she was an Independent Member of the House of Lords Appointments Commission.
Sir Christopher Rose: Kt 1985; PC 1992: Chief Surveillance Commissioner, since 2006
Martin Sinclair: Responsible for the audit of a broad portfolio of clients including the Ministry of Defence, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Department for International Development, Home Office, Ministry of Justice, Northern Ireland Office and Parliament.
Cindy Butts: Deputy Chair Metropolitan Police Authority; formerly a researcher for the Economic Secretary to the Treasury and then a House of Commons Researcher; an Assessor for the Judicial Appointments Commission and more laughably; Observer for the NHS Appointments Commission.
Not at all establishment of course?
John Bercow
The whole thing is an establishment stitch up and the whole process so convoluted, that by MPs shouting loudly enough, Kennedy is Independent, they hope to drown out the reality. Bercow has already sent out a missive to MPs urging them to express their concerns about the Kelly proposals to Ipsa. Bearing in mind Kennedy has already expressed that he doesn’t think the Kelly report permits MPs to rip off taxpayers enough and wasn’t a ‘proper consultation’, this is but an open door. He further adds Ipsa has a statutory requirement to consult, on allowances amongst other things, a number of specified persons and bodies as specified in the Parliamentary Standards Act 2009 (s5(4)). These include the Speaker of the House of Commons… well, well, well there is a surprise, it may be pertinent to now have a chance to take a look at Bercow in my article about The role of the Speaker of the House of Commons.
So what exactly can Ipsa do?
As explained in the FAQs on the Ipsa website:
What will happen to MPs who break the rules?
A Commissioner for Parliamentary Investigations will be appointed, who will investigate complaints against MPs in relation to the allowances scheme and registration of financial interests and who will be able to refer findings to the House of Commons Committee on Standards and Privileges.
The Commons Committee of Standards and Priviliges comprises of- you guessed it -MPs and the current line-up is: (MPs claims courtesy of the Daily Telegraph)
David Curry MP (Conservative, Skipton and Ripon) (Chairman) switched second home from London flat, where he spent £785 on furniture and £1,300 a month on rent, to constituency cottage he has owned since 1987.
Kevin Barron MP (Labour, Rother Valley) claimed London flat in 2004-05 as his second home with a monthly mortgage interest of £1,509, which rose to £1,791 in 2005-06. It increased in 2007-08 to more than £2,000
Andrew Dismore MP (Labour, Hendon) Spent £275 on an Afghan rug
Nick Harvey MP (Liberal Democrat, North Devon) had to be reminded twice by parliamentary officials to submit receipts with his expenses claims
Greg Knight MP (Conservative, East Yorkshire) claimed £2,600 in expenses for repair work on the driveway at his designated second home
Elfyn Llwyd MP (Plaid Cymru, Meirionnydd Nant Conwy) claimed £4,233.38 for a replacement boiler at his second home in London.
Chris Mullin MP (Labour, Sunderland South)
Nicholas Soames MP (Conservative, Mid Sussex) claimed up to £1,340 a month for mortgage interest on Westminster home
Paddy Tipping MP (Labour, Sherwood) claimed mortgage interest payments of about £500 per month on a flat in London.
Dr Alan Whitehead MP (Labour, Southampton Test) claimed mortgage interest payments of up to £730 per month on his second home in London. Also claimed £1,942.98 for a replacement boiler.
Will I be able to make a complaint about my MPs expenses?
The Parliamentary Standards Act allows for the Commissioner for Parliamentary Investigations to conduct investigations following complaints from individuals. The procedure by which this will happen will be decided by the Ipsa Chair and Members.
The Commissioner for Parliamentary Investigations has not yet been appointed, but under legislation has to be approved by The Speakers Committee, who report to? Mr ‘I forgot which was my main residence ‘Bercow.
This is how thick our politicians really are:
How much will IPSA cost?
The Ipsa is under a statutory duty to aim to do things efficiently and cost-effectively. Implementation of Ipsa is still at an early stage, with various options being developed. It is too early to say how much Ipsa will cost to run as this will depend on decisions which have not been taken.
In other words, we haven’t got a clue, but we can run the country really guv. Who in the real world develops a business entity with absolutely no budget, no idea and really not caring about costs?
As a further joke the legislation provides:
Paragraph 22 sets out that the Ipsa is to be funded by money voted by Parliament. This means that it will be voted annually by Parliament in the same way as departmental resources. It is for the Ipsa to prepare an estimate of the resources it will require. It is to submit this to the Speaker’s Committee, headed by the one and only Bercow and comprising of, we can sing the chorus together… MPs.
Is the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority really independent? No I didn’t think so either.
Communication Political style
I just had to laugh that the online communications champion for the Labour Party, is so keen to engage with the general public, that she a policy of blocking some people from following her twitter account.
Whilst this seems to be a shot in the foot and indicative of the way that British Politicians behave, it is particularly bizarre, as her role is one of on-line communications development. I can totally understand her choosing not to follow people, but stopping them following her, given her role is very strange.
It seems that when politicians talk about engaging with the public, what they actually mean, in many cases and it appears at the communication level for the Labour Party, this means only with people who meet the censorship policy criteria.
Whilst anyone who has been blocked from following, is not actually missing a great deal, it seems to me that her policy is exactly in line with those of the political system who continue to block their ears to most people.
As she appears not to want people to follow her, I wont bother putting up her twitter account link.
If she does tweet anything of importance, you can be sure we will post it on anarchy in the UK, but don’t hold your breath for a follow up article.
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=f012e209-2759-4e1a-90de-d29ce9e873ed)
It isn’t fair
Well we had a board meeting a couple of weeks ago and I put forward a new proposal.
Any other business:
- Image by Getty Images via Daylife
1. Review of expenses – formalize the process.
As there is a recession and the winter is coming along, I thought it right and proper that Directors, (not the hoi-polloi) should be permitted a few official breaks as we worked so hard and no one else does. Goodness, we even have to turn up for work from time to time.
It just didn’t seem reasonable to me, that I should be expected to travel for an hour by car to get in to work, so felt that we should introduce a second home allowance for any Director who lived more than an hour away, by foot, as this seemed a reasonable commuting expectation.
My colleagues pointed out that most staff travelled in further than that. Mere detail I pointed out and carried on:
I proposed that the Company should pay for my furniture for my new home, along with cleaning bills, gardening, White-goods and electronic equipment and general upkeep, which of course if I had any tax liability, then the company should pay the cost of this to my off shore bank account, as a ‘consultancy charge’ through my other shell company based in The Cayman Islands.
The open mouths that gazed at me told me all was going well so I continued:
Because I would be staying in a Second Home during the week, I think the company should pay my food bills, after all I had to fill the fridges and cupboards in two houses, surely they could see the sense in this.
I pressed on:
I think it only fair that as I am the person who is expected to suffer by having to have a second home, it is only fair that I keep the sale price of the home the company paid for, but I should have the option to decide which home I should be able to claim expenses on a week by week basis, just to make sure it was all value for money.
Well my fellow directors were getting in to the swing of this, I could tell by their ashen faces, in fact a couple of them began whispering to one another:
I then suggested we put this to the vote and I couldn’t believe it when the decided this was not a good idea, even worse an emergency shareholder meeting was called and I was kicked out.
Now to cap it all, I have been billed for the expenses I had been claiming for years. I went to talk to my solicitor and sure enough she confirmed, those claims were not against the rules. Nowhere in the rules did it say I couldn’t claim for having a weekly sauna, decorators, tax advice, second home, or even third home for that matter. In fact I could have claimed for a private jet and yacht as they were not against the rules.
It isn’t fair.
Oh and by the way, my new book ‘how to claim expenses – no questions asked’ will be out soon, published by ’scum’.
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=29bc7408-f3c5-4415-9645-b3680801d1d7)
Bloggers behind the rocks
I was a little upset, mildly speaking, when a twitter user @pickledpolitics, who appears to write for The Guardian posed the question,
How does blog hosting impact your legal situation?
and quoted a so called ‘important’ political blogger on UK politics, who goes by the name of Guido Fawkes.
These two people set themselves up as relevant and important bloggers in the UK. Pickledpolitics – Sunny – has, to his credit actually got off his arse and attended a climate camp demo. But as far as I am aware that consisted of the Greenwich, happy clap demo in September, where even the Police got bored.
Paul Staines- Guido Fawkes – who knows what he has done apart from set up a barrier against prosecution, apart from this possible relationship
I digress a little…..
Pickledpolitics posed the question, should bloggers be worried about legal consequence and he was impressed that Mr. Staines had a convoluted legal set-up which protects him from legal action.
Unfortunately the convoluted process is too difficult for Mr. Staines to follow.
‘…Factual correction: I am not legally the publisher. I also mispoke in that interview, the publisher is actually in Nevis, which is not that far from the Caymans. Got offshore entities muddled.
Nor am I “always mostly in the UK” as, so far, unsuccessful plaintiffs have discovered.
Incidentally, I have a mirror site on standby in a fourth jurisdiction. The URL itself is registered in a fifth jurisdiction after the Merrills / Northern Rock memorandum domain registrant based legal attack. I live and learn.
At the end of the day, you have to have the resources and be prepared to fight….‘
Mr. Staines has to retract, he isn’t even the publisher of his articles, so can be absolutely discredited as a blogger and he doesn’t quite understand Geography, but sees fit to pontificate on the UK.
Far beyond this, a genuine blogger stand by his/her posts, many have died or ended up in jail for their beliefs and comments. The whole post that Bloggers need legal protection stinks of tails up the arse, that is not blogging, that is a corporate gig.
They pretend they are important individuals, but eventually the truth comes out, they don’t publish their own articles, they don’t know where the website is based and they really are not too sure about anything, other than their arses are safe.
Anarchy in the UK is published in the UK, by a UK national who is prepared to take any libel action thrown at it.
With absolute disdain and contempt for bloggers on the corporate gig and more interested in their own tails than actually standing by what they write.
This post is filed under bureaucrats, as in arrogant tossers who are not spending their own money.
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=752389a0-ecc5-4857-8240-8ef66d292759)
MPs errors
Anarchy in the UK is, a regular readers will be well aware, a comment on the state of the UK as it stands.
I do not hide my absolute contempt for Democracy and many British institutions be they state bodies or large private enterprise. This contempt is a result of the complete contempt with which these large corporates and Government bodies treat the population or the customer.
anarchy in the uk
I wanted to turn my attention to MPs expenses and the apparent disconnect between politicians and the public. People make mistakes and I don’t have an argument with this; people rip other people off, this is a fact of life; people lie, this happens. But when we have a situation of these three events coinciding with a group of people who make the laws which affect our everyday lives, there is a problem.
David Cameron
It is not good enough that Cameron has paid back his ‘error’. He wants to be the political head of this country, but he is either too thick or too corrupt to know what is happening in relation to his expenses. How is he meant to run a country if he can’t manage a simple expenses claim.
I used to run a medium sized business and I expected staff to understand how to make an expenses claim, I certainly wouldn’t promote an idiot who didn’t know how to follow a simple procedure and I would fire anyone who tried to be clever with false claims and that was in a medium sized business.
Cameron can’t understand that cutting wisteria is not a legitimate claim and it took the Daily Telegraph to bring him to book. Is he really fit for purpose? No, get rid of him, is is evidently incompetent as he can’t quite manage a simple expenses claim form. How is he meant to deal with issues of state? I certainly would not recognize the moron as competent, any more than I would Brown.
Gordon Brown
Dear old Brown, is a man who lives in a grace and favour property, but apparently felt that paying his brother for a cleaner for a ’second home’ (for goodness sake you and I are paying for his first home) was acceptable. This is the man who managed to claim twice within six months for the same plumbing job, but it was an ‘inadvertent mistake’, no wonder he keeps re-announcing the same policies year after year as new initiatives, oh and by the way you and I also probably paid for his Sky Sports. But of course those self serving MPs refused to permit scrutiny of their expenses, claiming that the Freedom of Information Act shouldn’t besmirch their hallowed ground and this issue over sky sports remains under wraps. Speaking of television, Jacqui Smith, ‘made a mistake’ in claiming for porn films for her husband.
The whole of the House of Commons is littered with unacceptable claims and anarchy in the UK will remind you of the contempt with which politicians held our money as we move forward to the election.
As I said, I accept errors are made, which do not require, in many instances more than a written warning, but there are positions of responsibility which means that an error is unacceptable.
MPs sit in that spotlight, these are people who are entrusted, by those who bother to vote for the idiots, to scrutinize legislation. If they can’t work out that claiming a Remembrance Day wreath is unacceptable – finger pointed
Boris Johnson
directly at Boris Johnson, is just repugnant, then it gives me the horrors that they are in a position to make decisions about anything other than their own life. I would not employ anyone in any capacity who ‘made the mistake’ so many of our MPs, Mayors and Local representatives have made, they are not fit for office.
But aside from that, exactly how much has the Thomas Legg audit cost me? I don’t recall reclaiming audit expenses. His bill must be charged equally amongst the MPs he audited, why should you and I pick up the bill. MPs decided they didn’t need to be audited, I see no reason I should foot their audit bill.
Anarchy in the UK refers to the corruption, arrogance and incompetence within this country and the British Democratically elected Houses of Parliament is perhaps the epitome of anarchy in the UK.
I will of course return at another time to the point that a Democratically elected Government in the UK has for the past twenty years been opposed by over 70% of the population. But hey Democracy is all about the money in the wallet isn’t it?
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=46dcf259-bfd8-4f91-ad4f-1d55afd31795)
Mandelson the arrogant
The US Government decided that bailing out the global General Motors brand was chasing good money after bad so pulled the plug on the whole idea and have left General Motors to mainly sort out the mess it had got itself into.
In the interim a Canadian company- Magna, largely funded by Sberbank from Russia agreed a buy-out of the European operation, potentially safeguarding something of Vauxhall in the UK and Opel in Germany. Magna asked for some additional assistance in the finalisation of the process, approaching both the German and British Government for support. The Germans, through their State and
- Image via Wikipedia
National Government Structure came up with in the region of £1 billion in support, providing them with a 20% stake in Opel, the British Government looked in to the pot of money Gordon Brown had set aside during the years of plenty and found £0.00 in support of Vauxhall.
So the US Government threw their hands up in horror, Magna a private business bit the bullet as did Sberbank and the German National and State Government, but Mandelson thought it was a bad idea, so the British Government took the same decision as the US (and I am not taking sides on the decision).
I only add that five months later, when Magna are deciding on where to retain an investment going forward, up steps Mandelson to suggest he is trying all he can to secure the future of Vauxhall in the UK, but Magna are not in the least bit interested.
The Government, of any hue in this country are so fixated with their own dogma and really seem to believe that the world owes this country.
Lets look at some recent appalling legacies of the UK - Israel (The Gaza strip will be fine), Disputed Kashmir (Just a couple of Nuclear states still fighting over this), Zimbabwe (not our fault), Chagos Islands (leases go wrong and anyway so what if a few thousand people lost their homes) Northern Ireland (It will be fine), Nepal (so they fought for the UK who cares) to name but a few.
What exactly does this country think the world owes to it? Magna does not owe the British Government a cent and when they asked for support the British just turned away. Why exactly should Magna give a rats?
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=4332e528-8e87-46f9-9cdf-851483f96c52)